boys and girls. She told me she thought their company would
counteract the effect of having to endure a high school's rabble.

There came a night, after a day of niggardly discouragements, when the
strange moroseness seemed too heavy to bear. I told my aunt that I did
not want any supper--a fact which did not worry her too much, since she
was in a hurry to dress and go off to a studio party of some silly sort.
And when she was gone and I was alone in the apartment, I could not read
or rest or do anything. I tried to study my next day's lessons, but had
to give them up.

And at last I put on my hat and coat and went down to the street. The
air was bracing, but I was not used to the streets at night--and a
white, wraith-like fog was beginning to seep up from the pavements and
cluster in misty, yellow patches around the lamp-lights.

Shivering, I went on. I did not know where I was bound. The old, savage
loneliness--here in the open, where the dampness brought the scent of
withered grass and lean, bare trees--was sharper, more embittering than
ever.

I went across the street and into the nearest entrance of Central Park.
The quietness of everything there frightened me, called up every
foolish, childhood fear and superstition. I went through dark lanes that
were branched over with creaking branches. I saw the lake, black, cold,
with the stippled reflections of shore lights shining up from its edges.
I felt the moist, chilly wind that came across the big lawns and struck
my face and chest and shoulders. I felt--I could not help but feel that
I must go on, go on and on--in search of I know not what.

I came at length to the Fifth Avenue side of the park. The huge white
stone and marble houses that flanked the street beyond were half lost in
the mist. The automobiles that went up and down the pavements, which
were wet and shining like the backs of seals, made no noise--went
silently, mystically, sweeping blurred trails of light upon the
sidewalks as they passed.

Against that white, low horizon of houses I saw one thing that loomed
dark and gropingly conspicuous.

I did not know what it was. Not then. But it held my attention: the
darkness, the gray curve of it against the sky. There was something
about it that was forbidding, deep, sombre. The lower front of it seemed
to be arched and pillared--and under each arch the shadows were
impenetrably black.

There were automobiles waiting in front of it, at the sidewalk's